Toyota Kaikan: Inside one of the world's most fascinating factory tours

By Frances Cha, CNN

Updated 0140 GMT (0940 HKT) March 13, 2014

11 photos

Touring Toyota – The Toyota Kaikan plant at the company's headquarters in Japan allows visitors to walk through welding and assembly areas where the world's best selling cars are made (although visitors aren't allowed to get this close).

Hide Caption

1 of 11

11 photos

World champion – "Toyota became a corporate icon because it achieved and sustained record-setting operational performance measured in terms of productivity, product reliability, and time to market in an incredibly competitive industry," MIT professor Steven Spear tells CNN.

Mama – Inside Toyota, the Motomachi factory is referred to as "the mother plant." Engineers are sent from here to train workers in other company manufacturing bases in Japan, such as the Tsutsumi plant in this photo, and overseas.

Hide Caption

4 of 11

11 photos

Stat line – The plant produces 70,000 cars per year; that breaks down to one car completed every 135 seconds. More than 30,000 parts go into each car and 760 robots are used at the Motomachi facility. Countless emulators have tried to decipher the secrets of the Toyota system.

Hide Caption

5 of 11

11 photos

Different models on the line – You'd think one of the world's most efficient systems would have production lines dedicated to single models, but Toyota says it isn't so. The company mixes models on the line to keep workers engaged and alert.

Soul music? – Visitors stop in their tracks at the Kaikan Museum whenever this robot starts playing the trumpet. It produces its beautiful music via piston-powered lungs and rubber lips.

Hide Caption

8 of 11

11 photos

"We need to talk about your TPS reports." – "The capacity for deriving far more value from fewer resources in less time has caught the attention of managers in other sectors, not just automotive, since they are are also under pressure to do much more for their stakeholders while burning less time and other resources," says MIT professor Steven Spear of the Toyota Production System (TPS). The system is depicted here in miniature at the Kaikan Museum.

Hide Caption

9 of 11

11 photos

Can't wait – If Toyota's vision becomes reality, in a few years we may all be traveling in these vehicles.

Hide Caption

10 of 11

11 photos

Totally makes sense – Because company-branded curry is obviously what you'd sell at the gift shop in a car factory.

Hide Caption

11 of 11

Story highlights

The Toyota Production System is considered by many the best in the world

Visitors can tour Toyota's Motomachi Plant, internally known as "the mother plant"

At Motomachi, a car is completed every 135 seconds

Toyota was the world's best selling automaker in 2013, selling 9.98 million vehicles

It's like a scene out of "The Terminator."

Rows upon rows of giant robot arms weave in and out of a tightly packed assembly line of unpainted car skeletons.

There are no humans in sight -- just huge machines working in jerks and spasms, but quickly, each massive arm doing something different.

Some spew sparks and fire, some brush, some drill.

Others wipe or probe with their strangely shaped tips.

From a second floor glass bridge inside Toyota's Motomachi plant, our tour group stares down at production lines on either side of us, noses pressed to the glass.

Studied at universities and schools around the world, the Toyota Production System is considered by many to be the most well-run and efficient self-correcting production system in the world

Although Toyota has been remarkably transparent about its renowned system -- opening its plants to anyone who wants to observe or study them -- emulators (automotive and beyond) have struggled to match its remarkable success.

"Many companies have focused on tangible 'artifacts' of the Toyota approach," says Steven Spear, senior lecturer at the MIT Sloan School of Management and co-author of the Harvard Business Review article "Decoding the DNA of the Toyota Production System."

"Very few have recognized and incorporated the high speed learning dynamic that is essential. The differential results between the tool-oriented imitators and the behavior-oriented emulators are profound."

The company itself officially explains its system this way: "The practical expression of Toyota's people and customer-oriented philosophy is known as the Toyota Production System (TPS). This is not a rigid company-imposed procedure but a set of principles that have been proven in day-to-day practice over many years."